Abstract
In 2015, a massive earthquake of 7.8 and 7.4 magnitude struck Nepal. This resulted in severe economic and infrastructural damage, not to mention many human casualties. The government of Nepal has identified 625,000 houses as fully destroyed and 180,000 houses as being partially damaged (PDNA Vol B, Post disaster needs assessment – sector reports. Government of Nepal, Kathmandu, 2015; Sector Plans – GoN, Sector plans and financial projections -working documents. National Reconstruction Authority, Government of Nepal, Kathmandu, 2016).
This research is a comparative study of traditional-urban, peri-urban, and remote rural settlements of Nepal which were severely hit by the earthquake. It provides an overview of interests and perceptions of local communities in terms of the recovery process. Furthermore, this research also identifies resilience in terms of basic service recovery (basic shelter, electricity, water supply, telecommunication, groceries/food) and existing challenges in housing recovery programs. Assessing the different settlement types individually also allows for tailored policy recommendations to bridge related gaps. From the survey conducted, it can be seen that earthquake affected people’s perception of housing (re)construction has changed considerably and that they are more interested in having earthquake resistant houses after the 2015 events. Analysis also shows that, unlike in urban areas, people in rural areas tend to build stronger houses when they understand the scientific reason behind earthquake-induced damages. Lack of financing is a major hindrance for reconstruction in all study areas, and there is a need for government and financial institutes to engage to create favourable financing schemes.
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Notes
- 1.
Nepal is divided administratively into Federal provinces, Districts, Gaupalika which was previously known as Village development committees (VDC), Metropolitan areas and then Municipalities.
- 2.
VDC were a local governance body before March 2017 which is replaced by Gaupalika that has greater decision-making powers. Development works at local levels were executed through VDC.
- 3.
Lambda test is a measure of association for nominal variables and its results ranges from 0.00 to 1.00. A lambda of 0.00 reflects no association between variables and a Lambda of 1.00 is a perfect association.
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Acknowledgement
The researchers would like to thank the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Institute of Rescue Engineering and Civil Protection (TH Köln) for their generous financial support to undertake this research.
The researchers would also like to thank the Kathmandu Valley Preservation Trust (KVPT) & Architecture Sans Frontieres Nepal (ASF Nepal) for support on data gathering and logistics.
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Shrestha, R., Fekete, A., Sandholz, S. (2020). Post-earthquake Recovery in Nepal. In: Roggema, R., Roggema, A. (eds) Smart and Sustainable Cities and Buildings. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-37635-2_5
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